


Newton's Cradle

by james



Category: Leverage
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Multi, Polyamory, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 00:23:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2793029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/james/pseuds/james
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, they drive him crazy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Newton's Cradle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Teaotter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teaotter/gifts).



Alec walked into the room and stopped. He thought very hard about turning right the fuck around and going back to his office – the room Eliot insisted on calling his "toy room" but the man just didn't appreciate all the equipment Alec needed to stay on top of the entire world of hacking.

Which, okay, it _was_ a toy room, but there was no need to call it that, and certainly not in that tone of voice. (And especially not since they had a toy box in the bedroom, and there were a lot of things Alec didn't want to get mixed up together. Sex and hacking were near the top of the list. (Sex and "ow that fucking hurts" were at the very top of the list, right next to "this is really high up" and "no, I am not jumping off it." There were some things that did not belong together, ever, no matter how cute somebody was who was asking.)

Of all the things that didn't need to be together – sometimes "Eliot" and "Parker" needed to never, ever be left alone in a room together. Case in point: they were currently in the living room of their apartment playing stare-down. Eliot was sitting on the edge of the couch, elbows on his knees, and he was staring straight ahead at Parker who was cross-legged on coffee table, staring right back.

Neither of them was moving, and if Alec had cared, he might have gone over to see if they were both breathing. He didn't care, however, because this was the creepiest thing on the planet, and they knew that, and they did it anyway. "Not when I'm home" he'd told them, more than once, but did they listen? Apparently not, because there they were, staring at one another and they'd be there for hours if Alec left them to it.

He scowled at them, and wondered if he felt like going over and interrupting them, or if he just wanted to throw things at them from here. Probably not a good idea; his aim was kind of questionable and there was a fair chance he'd miss them both entirely. That would just be embarrassing as well as not actually make them stop.

He waved his hand in their direction and said, "Fuck you two," and just grabbed a sandwich from the fridge. He made sure to get it from the plate labelled "Eliot's, Do Not Touch, Especially You, Hardison."

Those sandwiches were always better than the ones Eliot made for everybody else, if only because they were flavored with the sweet taste of thievery. He unwrapped it as unstealthily as he could, right there in the kitchen which was completely open to the living room. He knew Eliot could hear him, and he knew Eliot would have no doubt that Alec was stealing his sandwich. Alec took a huge bite, made loud 'mmmmm' noises, and tried to figure out what was in the damn thing so he could comment on it.

Turkey, ham, two kinds of cheese – Alec had no idea what they were called, but they were awesome and there was no spicy mustard, which was weird because Eliot loved that shit and Alec hated it. In fact – "Oh, hell no."

The sandwich was made exactly the way he liked. Alec yanked the fridge door open and looked at the plate labelled "For Everyone." And yep, right there was Eliot's weird pinkish red meat thing with the sauce that burned a hole in your tongue, and the frou-frou lettuce that Alec only ever ate when he was stealing Eliot's food.

"Oh, it is _on._ " Alec shut the door – and realised he wasn't actually the slightest bit annoyed. Because there was a whole damn plate of sandwiches made just the way he liked, the bread was soft and not full of weird seeds and things that didn't belong in bread, and the cheeses were his favorite and – okay, if he called Eliot a sap to his face, was Alec going to get punched?

It probably said a lot about their relationship that no, Alec was not going to get punched and Eliot probably wouldn't even growl at him.

Alec took another bite of his sandwich, then grabbed a napkin because crumbs were no one's friend during the week it was his turn to do the vacuuming. Alec wandered into the living room, tried not to notice that neither Eliot nor Parker had moved (or else they'd moved a lot and had got back into position before he'd turned around, which was completely and totally possible, they were just that scary-good.)

Alec walked over, staying out of their line of sight, and leaned down to press a kiss to Eliot's cheek.

The corner of Eliot's mouth twitched, but Eliot didn't blink. Alec opened his mouth to say thanks, or to give him a hard time about the stupid signs because it wasn't like Alec stole his sandwich _all_ the time. Maybe. Well, probably. But he caught the little twitch of Parker's eyebrow and that reminded him that fair was fair, and he leaned over to give Parker's cheek a kiss, too.

"You are both crazy," he said, and okay, so he sounded completely not annoyed by it, but he was feeling content and well-fed, and his program to hack into the Kremlin by way of Wichita was going just fine. (Not that he had never hacked into the Kremlin before, but he leaving a trail to a particular asshole's door who needed a bunch of former KGB agents knocking on his door and asking him to please step outside.)

"Are we allowed to talk?" Parker asked.

"Long as you don't blink, you can do anything you like," Eliot said, and okay, this was beyond creepy. They were still staring, not blinking, and making Alec's skin crawl.

"Then I want popcorn," Parker said. "Alec, can you make us popcorn?"

"I am not doing anything to encourage this," Alec pointed at each of them, but his feet were already walking back to the kitchen. Traitors. He finished eating his sandwich while he put a bag of popcorn in the microwave. Eliot kept trying to throw the stuff out and Parker kept bringing it back in, and Alec was firmly on Parker's side on this, because popcorn wasn't supposed to be healthy, it was supposed to be salty and covered in pseudo-butter-flavoring and trying not to burn it was half the fun.

"The air popper--" Eliot shouted, and Alec shouted back before he could finish.

"Oh look, I'm putting the popcorn IN THE MICROWAVE where it belongs!" He stabbed the buttons extra-loudly, and glared at the side of Eliot's head. Which still hadn't moved.

Jesus. Alec watched the microwave instead, listening to it pop and ready to yank it free as soon as the popping slowed down. He braced himself as the timer got to thirty seconds – any moment now and it would be perfect. He felt his fingers twitch, and he knew Parker was better than him at this, which meant he'd spent a lot of evenings practising.

He'd almost gotten sick of eating popcorn there for awhile and had had to take a month off from eating any popcorn at all. But he'd gotten better, now he was almost perfect, where there were almost no un-popped kernels and no burnt ones and no Eliot smirking that air-popped was better and real butter made all the difference and eat a fucking vegetable, Hardison.

Popcorn was a vegetable, thank you, Alec retorted in his head. Then he was yanking open the door and pulling out the bag. He got it into a bowl and, okay, there were a few more un-popped kernels than he cared to admit to, but nothing was burnt, so score one for Team Hardison.

He took the bowl into the living room, sat down on the chair that faced the two weirdoes he lived with, and picked up a kernel of popcorn and threw it at Parker's head.

She caught it easily and ate it.

Well, crap.

"Come on, Alec, I want popcorn," Parker whined, and, seriously. 

Fine. Alec threw another piece, then another, then he threw a piece at Eliot who was smirking. Eliot caught it, of course, and Alec realised he needed a better delivery system. Rubber band? No, that would still send only one piece at a time. Remote-controlled airplane? He could rig a drop-chute to dump popcorn on their heads, but that lost the satisfaction of flinging something at their heads.

Maybe a wide rubber band, that he could fit a few pieces in? Alec jumped up and went rummaging. Surely they had something suitable, someplace.

He found a wide piece of rubber strapping in one of Parker's kits, and brought it back. He sat down and picked up a few pieces of popcorn, but as soon as he drew back, he crushed most of the popcorn. "Well, crap."

He thought about it for a second, then realised he had a trebuchet stashed someplace, maybe in one of the back closets. He set the bowl of popcorn down and went to search for it. It only took a few minutes – and maybe they needed to tidy up the bedroom, just a little, because which of them owned all of those boots? (It was pretty obvious judging by size which were Eliot's and which were Parker's, but he was pretty sure he dug through ten pair that didn't fit anybody who lived in their apartment. All right, so, a conversation to be saved for the future.)

He found the trebuchet tucked underneath a box of old Fishing magazines, which, seriously? They had magazines for that? They _owned_ magazines for that? Alec decided he wasn't going to think about it and took the trebuchet back to the living room. He set it up, then realised he could still only fling one piece of popcorn at a time.

"Unless you want me to make popcorn balls, I don't think this is gonna work."

"You can't make popcorn balls," Eliot retorted – without looking away from Parker. _Creepy._

"Did I say I knew how? All I know about popcorn balls is that on Hallowe'en they mysteriously appear in our kitchen and we never hand them out because you two hog them all."

"You ate five last year," Parker helpfully reminded him. She was staring at Eliot and waving her fingers at Alec, impatient for more popcorn, apparently. 

"I'm working on it," Alec said, and he tried the trebuchet once, just because he had it out and why not. It worked pretty well, delivery-wise, but it was a lot of work for just one piece of popcorn. "Eliot, do you have any canisters of CO2?"

"I'm not answering that question until I know exactly what you're planning to do with them," Eliot said, with just a hint of steel in his voice, like he thought Alec was going to blow up their apartment or something.

Which, actually, if he wanted an explosion he could use the old stand-by – put some popcorn inside foil on a table right between them, and hit it with a laser. Explode the popcorn all over them. Which, fun, but didn't actually serve the purpose of letting Parker eat the popcorn.

It occurred to him that she could easily eat whatever popcorn fell on her, so, something to keep in mind if the potato cannon didn't work.

"I just wanna build a small cannon," Alec assured them, and he went to go find a suitable piece of pipe.

"It'll blow popcorn all over the damn room," Eliot growled at him. "And you'll be cleaning it up."

"But I could-- okay, no, it won't work." The cannon would, indeed, throw a lot of popcorn at once but the individual pieces would go every which way and probably wouldn't hit either Parker or Eliot in the head, which was really his aim.

He needed aim _and_ accuracy. And some way to account for the lightweight of the popcorn itself, because if you threw it too hard it would just float in the air then land on the floor and not bean anybody on the skull. "I'm gonna have to build a catapult," he realised. 

"Oo, I wanna help!" Parker said, but still she didn't move her eyes away from Eliot's. This was getting beyond creepy, Alec thought. He wondered how their eyeballs weren't drying out, and he found himself blinking rapidly at the thought of it.

"I don't even know what-- Oh, I got LEGO. I'll be right back!" He leapt up, leaving the trebuchet on the table, and ran to his not-a-toy-room. He found a couple of small buckets full of random LEGO and grabbed them, then took Dwalin and Balin down from their shelf because you couldn't build a good catapult without dwarves, now could you? He took it all back out to the living room and spread out the pieces, trying to decide just how big he needed to make the catapult. He had enough LEGO that he could set up in the kitchen, actually, and fling popcorn at their heads from there.

"I'm gonna need more popcorn for ammo," he said.

"Oh, for God's sake," Eliot snapped. "Parker, on the count of three: one, two, three."

Alec glanced up on three to see both of them stop staring at one another. Parker came over and knelt down on the floor, picking through some of the LEGO Alec had set aside. Eliot was heading to the kitchen.

"I need another wheel this size," Alec showed Parker the one he'd found. He heard Eliot messing around in the kitchen and glanced over to see Eliot pulling out the air popper.

He made a mental note to entice them into playing with him a lot sooner, next time.


End file.
